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Friday, July 16, 2010

Manchester United Defeats Celtic 3-1 thanks to Dimitar Berbatov

Manchester United has made a good start to their North America tour by defeating Scottish giant Celtic 3-1 at Toronto. Dimitar Berbatov scored the first goal and assisted the other two for the United while Georgios Samaras scored the only goal from penalty for Celtic.

It was surely the night of Berbatov. There was no Rooney and he had to be in charge of the attack for Man United. They were without Wayne Rooney, Michael Carrick, Park Ji-sung and Nemanja Vidic as these players are resting after World Cup. Still, there were players like Berbatov, Edwin van der Sar, Paul Scholes, Darren Fletcher and Ryan Giggs and it shows that Sir Alex Ferguson did not take the friendly against Celtic very lightly.

Celtic is of course a difficult to play and they offered good resistance in the first half. Dimitar Berbatov scored the first goal in the 34th minute but Celtic came back in the 61 minute. It was surely not the night of Chris Smalling who made his debut for Manchester United. His foul on Joe Ledley brought a penalty for the Scottish club and Georgios Samaras did no mistake. The score was leveled.

Berbatov helped Welbeck to score the goal in 79th minute while Bervatov again assisted in the 86th minute. The third goal was scored by Cleverly.

Sir Alex Ferguson after the match said, "There was a period after Celtic scored when they got a bit of dominance over us and we had to get through. The second goal killed the game. It was a fantastic goal too, a marvellous bit of football from Berbatov. Celtic were very competitive. That's been the way when we have played them. There is not a lot in it between the two teams because the Scotland-England thing motivates both sets of players.''

Dimitar Berbatov was very happy and said to MUTV, "I was enjoying the whole game. We have started well with a win, Celtic are a very good team. They played very well. It's the first game of pre-season, still too early to judge, but it was a good test of our physical form and technical as well. We have a lot of games before the season starts so I think we will be fully prepared."

Manchester United is going to play against Philadelphia Union on Wednesday (21 July 2010).